A representative from the VA Dept of Natural Resources contacted me regarding a proposal to purchase land near Lucketts, VA to preserve the remaining Potomac Marble outcrops which are still present despite hundreds of years of farming. Here is my response.
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Thank you for this opportunity to discuss the importance of Potomac Marble outcrops in Loudoun County. One has to start with the historical context in order to fully understand the issue.
On the night of August 25, 1814, an invading British army burned down the U.S. Capitol and other buildings in Washington, D.C. This, of course, is a well-known fact. What is not well-known is that the building they burned down, the U.S. Capitol, a collaboration of Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Latrobe, was considered, at that time, the most beautiful legislative chamber in the western world. Think of that; the young United States, only thirty-eight years old had accomplished an architectural masterpiece admired even by the monarchical governments of the old world.
President Monroe and the U.S. Congress, after deciding to rebuild on the same site, were faced with the challenge of surpassing the original masterpiece because otherwise, in their minds, the British destruction had been successful. Latrobe was selected again to supervise the rebuild and he began to look for building materials, American building materials, which were accessible, transportable and, in particular, beautiful. For the twenty-two columns of the new House Chamber and the twelve columns of the Senate Chamber, Latrobe selected Potomac marble. This stone, a breccia, consists of clasts or pebbles of different sizes and colors held together by a calcium carbonate matrix. More poetically, Latrobe wrote to Jefferson in 1817,
Nothing can exceed the beauty of the Stone when polished, & as the Cement which unites the pebbles does not receive quite so high a polish as the pebbles themselves, the Mass acquires a spangled appearance, which adds greatly to the brilliancy of its effect.
This unique stone was available in Loudoun County Virginia and across the Potomac River in Montgomery County, Maryland. Expeditions were sent out from Washington DC by carriage to Loudoun County which included various experts selected by President Monroe to explore the potential quarries of the area. Finally, on March 25, 1817 the President himself, in the pouring rain, visited the area made the decision that Potomac marble would be used for the columns of the new House and Senate chambers.
The story of the quarrying and the transportation of the marble is a separate, but fascinating story which is not relevant here.
Of course, Potomac marble was well-known to the farmers of Loudoun County. Long considered an “an incumbrance to agriculture” (Latrobe to congress, 1816), these weathered-gray outcrops were blown-up with black powder or broken up and burned in kilns for lime. For example, Benjamin Latrobe’s son, John, tells a story in his autobiography (page 64) that while visiting the plantation of Samuel Clapham, his father:
“…saw for the first time the Breccia from which the columns of the House of Representatives…were afterward obtained. I remember his breaking off a piece from a protruding rock in one of Mr. Clapham’s fields and holding it to a grindstone turned by a negro boy until a flat surface was obtained, which, wetted, showed what the appearance would be when polished.
Mr. Clapham’s mansion, Chestnut Hill is still standing in Loudoun County. After having received permission from its current owners to look around, I surprisingly did not see any outcrops at all on the surrounding fields. But just across Route 15 at John Adam’s Rockcroft farm, huge outcrops dot the land. Where are the outcrops described by John Latrobe?
Of course, our farmers may consider the stone an encumbrance, but in reality, the incredible fertility of Loudoun County land owes much to the weathering of this limestone over the millennia. In fact, by the time of the U.S. Civil War, Loudoun County and surrounding areas were the bread basket of the world! Wheat and other grains grown here were shipped down the Potomac River and the C&O Canal to Georgetown where ocean-going sailing ships were waiting. Loaded with this grain they sailed to all points on the globe.
To get back to the main point of this letter. Why are the outcrops important? I think I have demonstrated the important (and little known) role this stone played in our history. If you live in Leesburg, although everywhere you dig you find Potomac Marble, it is only at Ida Lee Park and Olde Izaak Walton Park that you can see some small outcrops. There are no historical markers and the average citizen would just see a dark-gray rather rough rock outcrop suitable for kids to climb on, closely supervised by nervous mothers. They have no idea what happens when you break off a piece and polish it that, to quote Latrobe again, the “Mass acquires a spangled appearance, which adds greatly to the brilliancy of its effect.”
As more and more of the area along Route 15 north from Leesburg is developed for housing, wineries or breweries, these original outcrops will disappear. My sister lives in West Virginia, There, because of mountaintop removal, locals will point to a flat area and tell you, “There used to be a mountain over there, and over there and over there.” We are rapidly approaching this situation with our historical Potomac marble outcrops. If an area of original outcrops is preserved, so much of the history of our country could be told so dramatically. Perhaps from this letter alone, you can get a sense of how this could be done.
Thank you for your work,
Best,
Paul Kreingold
Author of “Potomac Marble: The History of the Search for the Ideal Stone”
Published by History Press, Charleston, SC
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